PPC and Paid Media: The Complete Glossary
PPC and paid media run on an auction most advertisers never see the inside of. What you pay per click, whether your ad shows at all, and how much of the available traffic you capture are all outputs of a handful of connected mechanics. The sixteen terms below are those mechanics, in the order they affect a campaign.
- Terms
- 16
- Sections
- 6
What you are buying
The unit of purchase and the platform that sells it.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC is a form of online advertising where you pay a fee each time someone clicks your ad, rather than paying a flat rate just to have it shown.
Google Ads is the most common PPC platform, letting advertisers bid on keywords so their ad appears when someone searches a matching term. Unlike SEO, PPC traffic stops the moment you stop paying — it's a rented spot, not an owned one.
- Google Ads
Google Ads is Google's advertising platform, letting businesses bid to show ads in search results, on YouTube, and across millions of partner websites.
Search campaigns (text ads tied to keyword searches) are the most common starting point for service businesses, though the platform also covers Display, Shopping, and Performance Max campaign types.
- Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
CPC is the actual amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks their ad in a pay-per-click campaign.
CPC is set through an auction, influenced by how much competitors are bidding on the same keyword and by your Quality Score — a higher Quality Score can lower what you actually pay per click even at the same bid.
Winning the auction
Why two advertisers bidding the same amount get different results.
- Ad Rank
Ad Rank is the score Google Ads uses to decide where your ad appears on the page, and whether it shows at all — calculated from your bid combined with your Quality Score and expected ad format impact.
Because Quality Score factors so heavily into Ad Rank, a well-optimized, relevant ad can outrank a competitor with a higher raw bid but a lower-quality experience behind it.
- Quality Score
Quality Score is Google Ads' 1-10 rating of how relevant and useful your ad, keyword, and landing page are to the person searching, which directly affects your ad rank and cost.
It's built from three factors: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. A higher Quality Score can mean a lower cost-per-click and a better ad position than a competitor bidding more but scoring lower.
Controlling who sees you
The difference between spending a budget and wasting one.
- Keyword Match Types
Match types (Broad, Phrase, and Exact) control how closely a searcher's query has to match your target keyword before your PPC ad is eligible to show.
Broad match casts the widest net (and needs the most negative keyword cleanup), Exact match is the most restrictive and precise, and Phrase match sits in between — the right mix depends on how much budget you have to test broader traffic.
- Negative Keyword
A negative keyword is a search term you explicitly tell Google Ads not to show your ad for, even if it would otherwise match your targeting.
Negative keywords are essential for cutting wasted spend — a plumbing company running ads on "plumber" might add "plumbing jobs" or "how to become a plumber" as negatives to avoid paying for job-seekers instead of customers.
- Smart Bidding
Smart Bidding is Google Ads' automated bidding system that uses machine learning to adjust your bids in real time, aiming to hit a goal like maximizing conversions or a target ROAS.
It depends heavily on having enough accurate conversion data to learn from — a new account or one with poor conversion tracking often performs worse under Smart Bidding than with manual bid control, at least until enough data accumulates.
Turning clicks into customers
Everything after the click, which is where most accounts leak.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is the percentage of people who see your ad or listing and actually click on it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
CTR applies to both paid ads and organic search listings, and in PPC specifically it's a major input into Quality Score — a low CTR signals to Google that your ad isn't relevant to the people seeing it, which can raise your cost per click.
- Landing Page (PPC)
A PPC landing page is the specific page a paid ad sends visitors to — ideally built around a single, focused offer that matches exactly what the ad promised.
A landing page that matches ad intent closely, loads quickly, and makes the next step obvious directly improves Quality Score and conversion rate; sending PPC traffic to a generic homepage instead is one of the most common ways campaigns underperform.
- Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is the setup that records when someone who clicked your ad actually took a valuable action afterward, like submitting a form, calling, or making a purchase.
Without accurate conversion tracking, a PPC account is optimizing blind — you can see clicks and cost, but not whether that spend is actually producing leads or sales, which makes smart bidding strategies far less effective.
Knowing whether it worked
The only two numbers that answer the question a business owner asks.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
CPA is the average amount spent on advertising to generate one conversion — one new lead, sale, or sign-up.
Comparing CPA against the actual value of a customer tells you whether a campaign is worth running at all; a campaign with a low cost-per-click can still be unprofitable if its CPA exceeds what a new customer is worth.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, usually expressed as a ratio like "4x" meaning $4 earned per $1 spent.
ROAS is one of the clearest ways to judge whether a PPC campaign is actually profitable, though it depends entirely on accurate conversion tracking and correctly valuing what a lead or sale is actually worth to the business.
Reaching them again
Selling to people who already showed you they were interested.
- Remarketing
Remarketing (also called retargeting) is showing ads specifically to people who already visited your website but didn't convert, following them across other sites or platforms.
Because remarketing targets an audience that already showed interest, it typically converts at a much higher rate — and lower cost — than ads targeting people who've never encountered your business before.
- Google Display Network
The Google Display Network is a collection of millions of websites, apps, and videos where Google can place banner and visual ads, as opposed to the text ads shown in search results.
Display ads are generally used for brand awareness and remarketing rather than capturing active search intent, since people browsing a news site or app aren't actively searching for a solution the way a Google search user is.
Common questions
Why is my cost per click higher than a competitor bidding less?
Because the auction ranks on Ad Rank, not bid. Ad Rank multiplies your bid by Quality Score, so an advertiser with more relevant ads and a better landing page can outrank you while paying less per click. Raising the bid treats the symptom; raising Quality Score treats the cause.
What is a good return on ad spend?
It depends entirely on your margin, which is why the number alone is meaningless. A 4:1 ROAS is excellent on a 70% margin product and loses money on a 20% margin one. Work out the ROAS at which you break even first, then judge performance against that rather than an industry benchmark.
Should I use broad match?
Only with an active negative keyword routine and enough budget to absorb the testing. Broad match finds queries you would never have thought to target, and it also spends on queries that will never convert. Without negatives it is the fastest way to burn a small budget.
Do I need conversion tracking before I launch?
Yes, and it is the one thing worth delaying a launch for. Smart Bidding optimises toward the conversions it can see; with tracking absent or broken it optimises toward clicks, and you pay for the education either way.